


the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this, you keep them alive

by JadeShepard (Jadestone)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/M, Mass Effect 3 spoilers, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:03:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10748826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadestone/pseuds/JadeShepard
Summary: Prompt: What love was ever as deep as a grave?Snippets of a variety of Garrus' thoughts and memories of Shepard, and a growing realization about the nature of love like theirs.Shepard is Earthborn & Sole Survivor. The numbers are rough chronology but you can just read straight through.





	the people you love become ghosts inside of you, and like this, you keep them alive

 

 11.

" _Tell me a story_ ," she whispers, " _where nobody dies_."

It is not a question, it is a warning; but he can't help but try to think of one anyway. But every tale he was ever told is of honor and war and victory, and none of them came without sacrifices. His people's history is long and moderately bloody to match, and he doesn't know if it's the same for humans or not. He can't imagine it's any different, despite the inexplicable softness of her skin.

Her breathing evens; slows. Garrus lays awake for a long time, searching for an answer he he becoming more and more desperately certain does not exist.

 

 

8.

The problem is: the worst has already happened once.

There was already a world where Shepard was killed. He had not loved her then—at least, not this way; he had loved her as a commander and a soldier and a friend. ‘Respect’ was not a strong enough word, or ‘follow’, or even ‘idolize.’ He could never be Shepard, and he knew that. But Garrus tried to anyway, desperately stuffing himself into a void shaped like nothing he could achieve. In those days, his love had been a quiet sort of reverence he could never properly explain to the people he’d left behind on the Citadel, when he failed to resume the life he’d had before her arrival. He just couldn’t. He had changed. She had changed _him_.

There was no going back. There was the period before Shepard entered his life, muted and dull. There were the glorious and wild days on the _Normandy SR-1_ , burning bright and frantic and so vivid he can hardly stand to remember them; even now that she is here, even now that she is closer than he could have ever imagined. Back then it had all seemed impossible, but they had been so young. Even if they didn’t dare think it, in their hearts they _believed_ they could win.

And then, suddenly, there was nothing but the terrible, terrible dark. He mostly remembers a bleak numbness, the impossibility of the scenario nearly drowning out the grief. The world was devoid of color, or shading: he lived in a sketchbook, nothing but black and white.

Shepard had died.

 

 

12.

He has never been good with goodbyes.

 

 

4.

When they fight the Thresher Maw on Tuchunka, Shepard goes into a frenzy, darting from cover to cover and shooting into its gaping throat, not even pausing to regroup or reload. It is as though he and Grunt aren't even there to help her. When it falls, it does so spectacularly—with a terrible scream like grinding metal, collapsing into a limp coil on the ground. Shepard stares at it, panting, teeth bared in a terrible grimace he's never seen before. Grunt hollers in victory behind them, whooping as he climbs up onto the rubble of a toppled column while headbutting the stone. She doesn't seem to be paying attention.

"Shepard?" he asks, tentative.

She jumps visibly, whipping her head around to face him, eyes wide and panicked. Her breathing still hasn't slowed, and, _oh_ , how could he have forgotten—

"Shit. Shepard, it's Garrus. You're on Tuchunka." He reaches forward, grabbing one of her hands. Her too-many fingers fit awkwardly between his own. "This isn't Akuze. It's okay."

"I—" she stops, swallows. Closing her eyes, Garrus can see her force herself to take a deep breath, holding it in for as long as she can before expelling the air in a rush. "Yeah. Okay. I'm fine."

He's still holding her hand. Suddenly nervous, he lets go, but she doesn't seem to have noticed.

She shakes her head violently, as though clearing away her ghosts. "Come on. Grunt!" she shouts up to the krogan, sighing in exaggerated exasperation as she walks towards where he still jumps up and down in the rubble. After one last glance at the felled beast, Garrus follows.

 

 

10.

There is something about her he does not fully understand and he is beginning to think he will not get the chance.

 

 

2.

“This looks like Earth,” she says quietly one day. They’re out of the Mako, digging in the dirt for some long-lost satellite, or something. But when he glances up, Shepard is distracted, staring down the hill into a patch of trees.

“Really?” Garrus asks, curious. The tall green stems sway slightly in the wind, thick clouds of pollen drifting in the breeze.

“Not really,” she replies. “Or at all, I guess. It just looks like what I always imagined a forest was like.”

“You’ve never been to a preserve?”

“Oh, I have, after I joined the Alliance. But when I was just a kid back on Earth, I lived in the city. You’d have had to walk for days to get to anything non-industrialized, which wasn’t gonna happen. We used to pretend, though, on good days. That the buildings were really just huge trees, and we were in a jungle. I forgot all about that.”

It’s startling, to hear Shepard mention her childhood. He’s not entirely sure about her upbringing or her life before the military—just a handful of offhand comments, like these. He’s not brave enough to ask her for more.

She stares in silence at the trees for a minute longer, as though she’s imagining walking through them. Despite the spacesuit and atmospheric filtration helmets they both wear, he can almost see it himself—Shepard, smiling, walking beneath the lush canopy of leaves. He’s never studied her face this closely before; but then, she’s never been this uncharacteristically distracted. For some reason, he’s surprised to realize her eyes, which he always thought were the blueish grey of steel, have hints of green in them. For a heartbeat, he’s seized with the conviction that she is going to go after all, bolt for the trees and leave him and the Mako and the accelerating disaster of the galaxy behind her. She’ll run off the map, and this time won’t turn back, or wait for him to catch up.

But instead—she shakes her head, and he snaps his eyes back to the ground. There’s something just barely visible in the rubble there, the tarnished dull gleam of old metal beneath a charred crumbling frame. He picks up the medallion, and wordlessly hands it to her.

“Oh,” she says, as though she’s forgotten why they came. “You found it. Alright, let’s get moving.”

And then she is Shepard again, his commander, and she turns her back to the view. Garrus, following her lead, climbs—with notable reluctance—back into the vehicle.

 

 

3.

“Garrus!” she exclaims, throwing her arms wide. He had seen her approaching, like some sort of merciful ghost, come to bear away his soul. She is dead. _He_ is dead, or close enough to it. It isn’t real, it can’t be real, until her arms are thrown around him, and, oh, she is strong and heavy and suddenly his vision is swimming with purples and reds and blues.

 

 

9.

She is frail; bones and skin and not much between them. Her meals these days are mostly coffee and whatever Chakwas forces into her hands before she jumps into the shuttle for the next mission. He can feel her heart beating through her ribs, the vibration rhythmic despite the double-staccato beat, so alien to his own. She lies curled against him, one arm flung across his waist, her head nestled against the crook of his shoulder. He’s afraid to move, despite the urge to run his talons across the exposed skin of her back, the desire to marvel in her smoothness. She sleeps so rarely these days. The dark circles under her eyes haven’t faded, despite the rare five hours of rest they’ve managed to grab together.

He used to think she was invincible. It more than half terrifies him, now, to be so constantly reminded she is not. But it’s still hard to remember, in the heat of battle, when he’s got his eye to the scope and sees nothing but the target before him. He can’t look up for her, he has to simply trust she’s there, raging her way through combat somewhere in on the front lines. And when the smoke clears, she’s always been there, grinning back at them, and the look in her eyes never fails to cause his heart to stutter inside his chest. How could she ever fall? Ever fail? He loves her when she is soft and still; when she is desperate and wild. But this, this is how he pictures her, even now: glancing at them over her red-striped shoulder, mouth quirked into a grim smile, her whole being blazing with the untamed glory of victory.

But here, in this moment; she murmurs, and shifts beneath the sheet. Where her skin no longer brushes his, his carapace is suddenly chilled, and where she rests her hand on him anew smolders with the heat of her skin. He’d never imagined humans would be so _warm_.

 

 

1.

Bullets are flying, some of them his own. It's entirely his fault the thugs came here for Dr. Michel, but at least he's not the only one fighting them off. With a grunt of pain that quickly fades to silence, the woman takes the last brute down, and the fight is over. He lowers his gun. The Alliance soldier surveys the clinic, her wary gaze sweeping back and forth across the bodies as she walks towards him and the shaking doctor.

"Perfect timing, Shepard," he tells her. "Gave me a clear shot at that bastard."

She glances up at him, appraising. "You took him down clean."

"Sometimes," Garrus replies, "you get lucky."

 

 

7.

He’s messed up so many things in life already. His career with C-Sec; the disastrous stint as a vigilante that cost him his face, if not his life; his relationship with his father. He can’t— _won’t—_ let this be one of the things his touch ruins.

 

 

14.

Her eyes are burning, a green fire flickering behind the grey steel. He’s stared into them many times, now, but he’s never seen her like this. There’s no more running left in her, no thought of it at all. All he wants is to grab her wrist and yank her into the shuttle, but he can’t move. He can’t even breathe, and not because an entire car had just smashed into his chest.

“Don’t argue, Garrus,” she hisses. There’s blood on her face, and he can’t see if it’s red or blue or black in the angry shadows of the beam.

“We’re in this till the end,” he tells her, the plurality of the statement his last plea. _Together, you and me. No Shepard without Vakarian_. But—

“No matter what happens,” she tells him, her voice more fierce than he has ever heard it before, “you know I love you.” She reaches out, caressing the side of his face. The scarred side. Her armored gloves are thick, blocking out any warmth from her palm. “I always will.” Tears are streaming down her cheeks, despite the vehemence of her stance. In her armor, in the middle of battle, here: this is the most fragile she has ever been. If he says the right words, she will break. She won't do it for herself. But she would do it for him.

“Shepard, I...” his voice cracks. He can’t voice the phrases he wants to, that his whole body is begging himself to say. _I need you to stay. I need you to come back to me. Oh, Shepard. I can’t do this alone._ “...I love you too,” he finishes. Turians don’t cry, not like humans. But his sub-vocalizations sing out his sorrow, and she knows him, better than anyone, and he has no doubt his grief is as plain on his face as hers.

And then the shuttle is moving, and she is backing away. He stares at her, unblinking despite the smoke of the battlefield. She stares back, for one long moment, and then turns to face the frenzy. He watches, his whole body aching with sorrow and inevitability, as she runs towards the chaos. She does not look back.

 

 

5.

When she kisses him, it is like nothing he has experienced before. Not just the physicality—although that, too, is a mystery he has only tentatively begun to explore. But behind the press of her lips—her passion, unbridled, unhindered by growing up in a meritocracy where you were plunged into dutiful servitude at the very beginning of adolescence. No one has ever told her that showing this much emotion, even in private, is unprofessional. He's beginning to see why the Alliance has so many regulations on physical relationships—is this what it's like, for all humans? A longing so deep he feels it not with his heart, but his bones? He doesn't think so. This can't be due to anyone but Shepard.

He runs his hands down her sides, and she is strange and beautiful and _his_. He, Garrus—just a scarred, beat-up turian who couldn't hack it as a cop—makes her laugh. And gasp, and cling, and moan. She is Shepard and she is so, _so_ alive.

 

 

15.

They emblazoned her name onto a thin strip of metal, like the others. Joker brrings it to him now, the night before the memorial, as though he knew it would take Garrus hours to be able to even consider prying open his fingers to release it again. The letters are dark against the burnished steel. He did not say anything as the pilot silently handed it to him, because it does not seem real. It can’t be. He half-expects her to come waltzing in any moment, throwing her arms as wide as her smile, exclaiming his name.

 _Tell me a story_ , she’d asked him. The only story he’d been interested in for years now was hers, her, how his fit in with hers. He doesn’t know what else to do if she is gone. He tries to picture the future, now that there is one: tomorrow, the next day, a year, fifty—but there is nothing. Not even darkness. Just... emptiness.

He sits, silent, staring at the plaque.

Eventually, light begins to seep through the holes in the ruined hull of the ship.

 

 

6.

Her favorite color is crimson and she likes to walk barefoot when she can (which is never very often) and her favorite constellation from Earth is Cassiopeia. She tastes like ash and starlight and coffee. He doesn't know if this all-consuming supernova inside his chest is what love is supposed to be like, but he can't imagine wanting anything else ever again.

 

 

13.

He whispers to her, now, grasping at this one moment where there’s stable ground beneath their feet. Nevermind the bystanders. They're surrounded by armies and rubble, and this planet, the one with trees she'd once dreamed about, is being steadily enveloped by flames. He doesn't know what to do. At least he hadn't been on the ground to see it when Palavan burned.

He knows how these stories end. There has only ever been one real ending, but sometimes, people stop telling the story partway through. They pretend it can turn out some other way: nothing bad ever happens to any of them again. Everyone is happy. The lovers live forever.

“Not sure if turian heaven is the same as yours, but if this thing goes sideways, and we both end up there…" She stares up into his eyes, waiting, always waiting for his answer. "Meet me at the bar.”

 

 

 

 

 

>   
>  _dreamt the earthquake finally came and made everything better_  
>  _dreamt you were alive again_  
>  _no that’s a lie_  
>  _i’m lying_  
>  _you have never been in my dreams_  
>  _but you are in the fruit trees i collect_  
>  _to keep the bees from dying_
> 
> _—Yuna Winter, “Nature Poems pt. III”_

 

**Author's Note:**

> I finished the Mass Effect trilogy over a month ago now, and it was emotionally devastating. In a good way, I think. But I haven't been able to properly write anything for it until this past week--guess I needed some distance (in the meanwhile, I played through the entirety of Andromeda).
> 
> I usually try pretty hard to write generic protags so that they could be anyone's who's reading my writing, but somehow for this, I just ended up tying it in to my Shepard's backstory, and didn't want to take it out.
> 
> Prompt from leviathanmirror from like... ages ago <3 
> 
> The title is from a quote by [Robert Montgomery](http://www.robertmontgomery.org/2grya25po4v0uts1x9p2asxcz6l3ca).


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